


In Which a Grudging Statement of Support is Issued

by ellissnow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, M/M, garak is...mentioned, julian is pining, keiko is the best, miles is a grumpy irishman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 04:12:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4248867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellissnow/pseuds/ellissnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keiko helps Miles be a better friend to Julian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which a Grudging Statement of Support is Issued

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously need to get better at coming up with titles. That or call everything "untitled" for the rest of my life.
> 
> And of course, of all my many unfinished stories, the only one I can bring myself to get finished is the one which has no Garak and barely any Julian in it! Oh well. I'm making progress on others, which is all I can really ask for. Especially in this heat! (Leave me alone, people from actual hot countries, we're not used to it over here, ok?)

Julian sighed into his beer, not for the first time that evening, and Miles found himself sighing in response.

“C’mon then, who is she?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Julian looked up at him in mild surprise, as if he had genuinely forgotten he was there at all – just one of the many things he does that annoy Miles endlessly, even now they’re friends.

“Julian. I’ve known you long enough to recognise that lovesick look on your face. So who is it this time?”

He’d expected him to come clean immediately, to tell him all about it in such excruciating detail that he felt mildly sick (but at least then it’d be over, and talking about it might have cheered Julian up a bit), but to his surprise, his friend just looked startled.

“Nobody. Nothing. Nonsense! Me, lovesick? Absolutely not.”

He looked highly uncomfortable all of a sudden – and well he might, what with that astonishingly poor attempt at denial.

“Julian. Come on, this is me you’re talking to. You can’t hide it from me. I’m your friend, and we spend enough time together that I’m going to notice these things. Why don’t you just tell me about her?”

“Honestly, Miles, there’s nobody, I…” Julian tried, shaking his head, but Miles isn’t convinced.

“You little liar,” he said teasingly. “You’re in love. And it’s been months! I’m not stupid! Honestly, why won’t you just tell me? Usually you love to talk my ear off about your latest woman, I’m actually quite surprised you’ve managed to resist telling me all the unnecessary details for this long…”

He wasn’t actually sure why he was encouraging Julian to tell him – normally he would have considered this a lucky escape from things he’d really rather not hear. Except it _had_ been months, months since Julian seemed quite himself. And, well, perhaps life on the station was bringing out his inner gossip, because he was rather intrigued…

Julian sighed yet again.

“Sorry, Miles,” he said, and he seemed to mean it. “You’re my best friend, you know that, and I normally tell you everything, I just… I don’t want to talk about it, alright?”

“You _really_ don’t want to talk about it?” Miles repeated in disbelief. “Are you sure? Why on earth not?”

“I know, I know, I love the sound of my own voice more than anything else in the quadrant, after all,” Julian said with an amused smile, echoing something Miles had told him on more than one occasion. “I…can’t really talk about it. You…you wouldn’t approve,” he continued, and his smile was tired, subdued.

That was about the last thing Miles had been expecting him to say, and he struggled for a long moment to find something to say in response. Not approve? Him? Was that what Julian thought of him?

“You know, I think I might have an early night after all, if you don’t mind,” Julian said suddenly, and Miles cursed the awkward silence that he had managed to cause. “I’m rather tired, and I have a meeting with the Commander and Kira first thing in the morning, so…”

“No, Julian, stay and have another pint with me and we can…” he started to say, but Julian was already standing up and finishing the last of his previous one.

“Sorry, Chief. Another night this week, I absolutely promise,” he said and walked off, drifting through the crowd in Quark’s like a man with the weight of the world on his thin shoulders.

 

 

 

“I shouldn’t have tried to bring it up, clearly,” Miles said to Keiko a little later, back in their quarters with a beer from their own replicator, admittedly not quite as good as the stuff Quark serves, in his hand. “If he had wanted to talk about it, he would have, I should have known that. But honestly, it’s just so unlike him NOT to want to talk about it.”

“Well _that’s_ true,” his wife agreed, looking thoughtful over her own glass of red wine. “Do you think it’s something else entirely? Perhaps it’s really _not_ one of his all-consuming crushes this time…”

“No, no, he admitted it eventually. Well, as good as, he said he couldn’t tell me who it was. And then he said I wouldn’t approve! Me! Is that what he thinks of me? That I would go around… _judging_ his choices in romantic partners?” He wouldn’t want Julian to think he had offended him, but Keiko would have been able to tell anyway, so he didn’t try to hide his indignant tone.

“Well…” she said diplomatically – a stance that was somewhat ruined by the way she looked at him, eyebrows raised, fond but incredulous little smile.

“What?”

“Well, honey… There are a lot of things you disapprove of,” she said.

He automatically opened his mouth to argue, but she was still giving him that look, and – and she was right, of course.

“Okay, so maybe I disapprove of some things,” he admitted gruffly. “But not people! There’s nobody on this station I would ‘disapprove’ of Julian falling in love with.”

“Miles,” Keiko said flatly, and he realised he was lying, or at least not being entirely honest, again.

“Yes, I know I said he could do better than a dabo girl when he got together with Leeta-”

“Which was elitist and unfair of you,” Keiko put in.

“Yes, it was unfair,” he continued in exasperation. “But you made me see that, and how unfair I was being, and now I would never say anything like that. I would never even think it!” he half-shouted. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m just…worried about him, and I want him to talk to us, to _me,_ even if it is the most boring, repetitive, ridiculous conversation I have all month. Which it will be,” he finished grumpily.

“I know, Miles,” Keiko said, taking his hand across the sofa. “It’s sweet that you worry for him. Now, put your beer down and listen to me for a moment… I think I might know who it is.”

“Put my beer down?” Miles echoed his wife in confusion, but did what she asked. “Why? Who is it? Is this like ‘I think you might need to sit down’? Who is it? And how do you even know? …is it you? Is he in love with you? Oh, that little bastard, I’d kill him if he…”

“No you wouldn’t,” Keiko interrupted him with patience that he knew he didn’t deserve when he was mildly intoxicated, annoyed or couldn’t figure something out, whether it was how to fix the latest transporter malfunction or what to get Molly for her birthday or who Julian was in love with. “And no, it’s not me. He said you would disapprove, right? Not ‘you would threaten to kill me and our friendship would be over’?”

“You’re right, you’re right,” the chief grumbled, sitting back and making himself comfortable, looking at his wife’s beautiful, serene and wise face. “Go on then, who do _you_ think it is?”

“Well…” She stopped before she had even started. “I think Julian might be right, you really might _not_ approve, so… Try not to react before you think it through?”

“Alright, alright, I won’t,” he replied grudgingly.

“Okay then,” she said. “Well… You said there was nobody on the station you would disapprove of him dating, right? Only, if it’s who I think it is, you might not have thought of them. Didn’t you really mean there are no _women_ on the station you would disapprove of?”

“You think it’s a man?!” Miles half-asked, half-exclaimed. “Julian? Well, I would be surprised, I’ve never heard him talk about any men, it’s only _ever_ women with him! But come on now, why would that mean I disapprove? I know I’m old-fashioned, but I’m not stuck THAT far back in the past!”

He looked at Keiko in disbelief.

“I don’t mean you don’t approve of him loving a man,” she said in exasperation, and there were signs that even her frankly saintly patience might be nearing an end. He realised she was giving him another familiar look – the one that said “come on Miles, you have the pieces, stop being an idiot and put them together”.

“Then what…” he started, momentarily baffled, before it suddenly hit him who she was thinking of. “Surely not…” he started again.

“Think about it!” Keiko urged him. “Of all the people on this station you don’t like, he’s top of the list. And he and Julian have been friends for years. You must admit he’s the only one who can really keep up with him. You even joked about it years ago, when they first met, remember? You said ‘Julian’s acting like he’s got a crush on the damned man’…”

“Yes, but I think I also said ‘I hate them both’! That wasn’t true, was it?!”

“Well, actually, honey, I think it pretty much was, at the time,” Keiko said, smiling in amusement, but Miles wasn’t really listening, instead contemplating the thought of his best friend, bright, energetic, hyper-intelligent yet astoundingly stupid Julian, being in love with…

“Garak!” he spat eventually. “I knew it… I KNEW it!”

“You had literally no idea until thirty seconds ago, so don’t start that,” Keiko said mildly.

“I knew he was _bad news_ ,” Miles said defiantly. “I knew he was up to something! And he was! Making Julian fall in love with him!”

“I’m sure Garak’s capable of a lot of things, but even he couldn’t _make_ someone fall in love with him,” she retorted.

“Well, you know what I mean,” Miles said. “He’s all…clever and mysterious, he was bound to attract Julian… Okay, okay, stop looking at me like that!”

“You’re being ridiculous,” she told him, and continued to look at him like that. “It’s not Garak’s fault if Julian has feelings for him, or Julian’s, for that matter. It’s not anyone’s fault, these things just happen. And if you really care about Julian, you’ll stop being angry about it and figure out what you’re going to do about it.”

“Do about it?” Miles said in a hopeful voice. “You mean… To make sure they don’t end up getting together? To make Julian see sense?”

“You know perfectly well I _don’t_ mean that,” she said immediately, and he knew as she said it that she was annoyed now, that she had had enough. “I hope his feelings are returned, I hope they _do_ get together.” They might have been having an almost-argument, but Miles got the feeling she meant it. But then she’d always said she liked Garak – she thought he was “polite and charming”, said he was “kind to Molly” and “made her laugh”…

“I’m going to bed,” she said, and stood up. “I suggest you think about how you’re going to support your _best friend_ before you come through. Okay, honey?” she added in a softer tone that told him she wasn’t really mad at him, just thought he was being an idiot.

Maybe he was, he forced himself to think as she went through to their bedroom. Maybe Garak wasn’t all that bad? After all, Keiko liked him. Molly liked him. Julian, apparently, more than liked him... And he had to admit, he hadn’t caused anything like as much trouble as he had expected when he’d first moved to the station, hadn’t hurt anyone, hadn’t destroyed the station – yet, anyway…

But seriously. Just because he wasn’t as bad as he could have been… Did Julian really have to go and fall for him?

Support your best friend, Keiko had said. Of course that was what he should do. Of course.

“God dammit, Julian,” he muttered to himself, and sat thinking for a while longer.

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t that late at night, but it took a while for Miles to figure out what he was going to say, then think of something better and less awkward to say, then decide to just forget it all and have a real conversation, and when he sat down at his console and tried to get in touch with Julian… There was no answer. He tried a second time, and still Julian didn’t respond. Perhaps he had gone to bed early, he thought, but it seemed unlike him, especially since they had had a late (but perfectly reasonable) night of drinking planned.

“Perhaps he just doesn’t feel like talking to you, idiot,” he muttered to himself as he tried again, resolving that he would give up after this and make sure to find Julian in the morning instead. _I can be an insensitive bastard, can’t I?_ he thought with a vague sense of guilt. _But then, so can he, and we still managed to make friends, so…it’s alright, isn’t it?_

Again his call went unanswered, but this time it felt like a good idea to leave a message, just in case Julian _was_ still up, in which case it would not only make him feel better, but hopefully put Julian’s mind at ease that bit sooner too.

“Hi Julian, just wanted to say, well, I’m sorry for earlier, I shouldn’t have pestered you about it. And, well, there’s another thing too, I know about…about Garak, and I wanted you to know that I, well, that you… Oh god, will you listen to me going on like this? Your feelings are your feelings, and it’s fine with me. Okay? God, I’m going to look like a complete fool now if it’s not even him. Anyway. I don’t disapprove of him.” That was at least a bit of a lie, and Julian would almost certainly be able to tell, but hopefully he would get the point that Miles was attempting to convey – that he intended to do his best to be supportive, no matter his feelings on the particular person in question. “He’s very…clever.” There we go, he thought, that was complete honesty right there! “And…” He struggled to think of another compliment. “Well-dressed… Uh, well then. Goodnight, Julian.”

He ended the communication and sighed as he stood up.

Keiko was standing in the doorway as he turned to head towards their bedroom.

“That was a lovely message, Miles,” she said warmly. He felt even more embarrassed about his lack of eloquence now he knew she had been listening too.

“I should have asked you what I should say before I recorded it,” he muttered self-consciously. “You’re much better at that kind of thing than I am.”

“No, it was really nice,” she insisted as she got back into bed and he changed into his pajamas. “It sounded…sincere. It was perfect.”

“You’re perfect,” Miles told her, joking but serious, as he got in beside her.

“Oh don’t start,” she replied with an amused eye roll. “I’m going to sleep, for real this time. Goodnight, Miles.”

“Goodnight, my perfect wife,” he said. “Computer, lights off.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
